- 3896 - UNIVERSE - too early? In the first data taken last summer, 2022, with the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the new James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers found six galaxies from a time when the Universe was only 3% of its current age, just 500-700 million years after the Big Bang.
------------------------ 3896 - UNIVERSE - too early?
- These
galaxies should be mere infants, but instead they resemble galaxies of today,
containing 100 times more stellar mass than astronomers were expecting to see
so soon after the beginning of the Universe. If confirmed, this finding calls
into question the current thinking of galaxy formation and challenges most
models of cosmology.
-
- These
objects are way more massive than anyone expected. Astronomers expected only to find tiny,
young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but they discovered galaxies as
mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the
universe. What is going on?
-
- The data was taken by JWST as part of the
“Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science” (CEERS) program and was the first
dataset released as part of the telescope’s early release program.
-
- “ NIRCam’s”
infrared eyes are capable of detecting light that was emitted by the oldest
stars and galaxies, allowing scientists to see back in time roughly 13.5
billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it.
-
- The
targeted area of the sky for these sets of observations was a “blank” field –
where no stars or galaxies had ever been seen before — and overlapped with
existing Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging.
-
- While large
galaxies with stellar masses as high as 100 billion times that of the Sun have
been identified previously at approximately one billion years after the Big
Bang, it has been difficult to find massive galaxies at even earlier times.
-
- Within the
JWST early release observation data, the team searched for intrinsically high
redshifted galaxies in the first 500- 750 million years of cosmic history.
Redshift is a measure of the age of an astronomical object, as due to the
expansion of the Universe, light from distant objects shifts to wavelengths
towards the red end of the spectrum. The redder the image, the more distant the
object is.
-
- They found
six candidate massive galaxies at high redshifts (z = 6.5 and z = 9.1), with
masses up to ten billion times that of our Sun, including one galaxy with a
possible stellar mass 100 billion times that of the Sun.
-
- This calls the whole picture of early galaxy
formation into question. The galaxies
discovered are so massive that they are in conflict with 99% of models for
cosmology. Accounting for such a high amount of mass would require either
altering the models for cosmology or revising the scientific understanding of
galaxy formation in the early universe.
-
- Either
scenario requires a fundamental shift in our understanding of how the universe
came to be. However, more observations
and data to confirm their findings, and more data might reveal other
explanations for what they found.
-
- This is our
first glimpse back this far, so it’s important that we keep an open mind about
what we are seeing. While the data
indicates they are likely galaxies, I think there is a real possibility that a
few of these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes.
-
- Regardless,
the amount of mass we discovered means that the known mass in stars at this
period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously
thought.
-
- What’s funny
is we have all these things we hope to learn from James Webb and this was
nowhere near the top of the list. We’ve
found something we never thought to ask the universe and it happened way faster
than I thought.
-
February 28, 2023 UNIVERSE - too
early? 3896
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--- Wednesday, March 1, 2023 ---------------------------
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